Book Review: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

The problem with rules was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time there were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure which side of the line you stood on.

Book Rating

3.75/5

Book Review

Little Fires Everywhere isn’t like any book I’ve read before, but I liked it quite a bit. It had some valuable lessons in it, for people of all ages.

When you start the book, you enter a suburbia of sorts, where life is perfect, and the people all pretty much the same. Then comes in Mia Warren and her daughter, Pearl, who don’t quite fit the mold. Mrs. Richardson decides to give them an apartment at a low cost, without realizing how much would change with them coming into town.

Rich characters and deep themes create this book to be one that you can’t quite forget about when it’s over. I have a feeling I’ll be thinking about this one for quite a while, and wondering what happened to the characters after the book was over. That, to me, implies a great author; one who can create such realistic characters that even after the book is over, you wonder what happened to them. Even though you know technically they never have existed in this world.

Little Fires Everywhere had quite a bit of hype around it, which always makes me nervous. However, after reading I understand that hype now. The only thing I thought was that it had quite a few story lines in it that made it somewhat difficult to follow. It starts out with a fire, and then backs all the way up to what led to that fire. Some of the stories throughout didn’t seem relevant to the fire, but seemed to make the book stronger as a whole.

I only rated it down because I was able to not take it with me on my vacation and I wasn’t upset about that or insistent upon finishing before my vacation, although I was quite close to finishing. Typically, for a book that I’m absolutely enthralled with and loving, I will finishing it within days. For this case, I kept putting it down and coming back to it later to finish it.

However, the ending really made the book a lot better. I thought it wrapped everything up quite neatly, and left just enough open for my imagination to take over.